We then worked on not telegraphing our kicks, focusing on lead leg attacks.

For some reason I forgot it was officially leglocktober and we did not do any leglocks.

We ended the session going through the entire spear section from Fiore…pretty simple but very fun. Always in search of good indoor winter weapons to play with, more room to thrust with a spear than swing a sword inside our small training area.

Russian fisticuff drill called anvils…with a name like that you can surely expect some bruising:)

Grappling up next. Last week we worked a sambo takedown called the Cuban, this week we worked on a variation of this. The Cuban is an inside leg trip, from this we did a rolling inverted kneebar.

This lead to getting the same sub from a half guard position as well. This all fell in line with out Leglocktober theme.

Wrestling season coming up for Gary so we wanted tog et him some mat time…Chris took Gary through three rounds of coached grappling.

We ended our session historical…for a change we went through the first three masters of Fiore’s spear. It has been years but still as fun as I remembered it. Last up was a review of our progress in Von Auerswald’s 1539 Ringer Kunst manual.

On with the kurtki…today we worked on the front trip and a takedown called the Cuban. Since it is still leglocktober we worked on a few leg locks and leg lock defenses today. Defending straight ankle lock and Achilles crush as well as the mechanics of the double ankle lock and a few others. We ended out grappling session with two rounds or parterre.(ground work)

Not to leave Jason out we did some basic navaja work from a seated position, foists or hand switches as well as a drill called the Sevillian star. Better to do it with footwork which Gary and I did but still useful to do it from the mat with a bum knee.

Stormfighting in a nutshell for those who have no idea what it is..15 second rounds of pure aggression and no rules.(we still do our best to not break our training partners though.) Although it is a comp in Russia, we use it as an attribute builder. Teaches aggressive attack and how to not only deal with pressure but how to apply it. One ten round stormfighting bout probably teaches you more than ten normal roungs of sparring but man…it kicks my butt bad! Will try tog et some video of the stormfighting next time around. Our stormfighting tradition comes way of RAF Russian All Round FIghting.

We then worked on a move form wrestling dubbed the farmaconda, made famous by the Schultz brothers. Since wrestling season starts soon for Gary, we will be hitting the wrestling extra hard. Here is a link to a vid of the farmaconda being used in international competition:

Seeing that this month has been dubbed Leglocktober, we decided that every session this month will include leglocks….went over bassic achilles crush and straight ankle lock as well as inverted heelhook.